Sister Miriam’s journal
22-23 Last Seed 4E201
Chapter II: “Bleak Falls Barrow”

 

Miri wakes at the hour of the wolf, excited at the prospect of exploring an ancient Nord barrow. She’s somewhat surprised to find Hasteinn already awake and fully kitted, sitting in a chair propped up against the door.

 

“Just making sure you don’t run off and cheat me of my fee, like other adventurers.”

 

His naked distrust barely dents her good humor. He considers Miri an adventurer! She is thrilled to realize that she is an adventurer now, more or less.
 

 

Miri and Hasteinn set out for Bleak Falls Barrow at the break of dawn. They encounter brigands on the approach to the barrow, but yet again, the sellsword proves to be an unstoppable force of nature in combat. He makes short work of the brigands, with only minimal assistance from Miri.

 

 

The inside of the barrow is no different. Draugr, giant spiders or duplicitous rogues alike, Hasteinn cleaves through them with ease.

 

The Wolf in his element.

 

The barrow is rich with undisturbed loot. Ancient burial urns, dusty chests, even mummified remains. Miri was worried that Hasteinn would object to what could be construed as grave-robbing, but he laughs it off. “They’re nothing to me. Loot as much as you want, I don’t care, as long as I get paid.”

 

Hasteinn himself shows little interest in rooting around for treasure. He is getting paid for his time, after all. But Miri soon discovers another reason for his circumspection.
 

 

Something is triggered when Miri lifts the lid of an ornate chest. With a blinding flash of magical energy, she is knocked on her ass, and suddenly she feels cold iron around her neck and wrists.

 

Hasteinn seems unalarmed - in fact he seems rather amused by her predicament. “Magical traps,” Hasteinn explains with a grin. “To deter grave-robbers, like you.”
 

 

“This is ridiculous. Can you help me with this device?”

 

“Yes,” came the laconic reply.

 

Miri wants to scream at him. “Well… would you?”

 

“Sure, for a fee. As you know, my services aren’t free. I’ll add it to your debt.”

 

Miri is staggered by her companion’s brazen profiteering. But she has no choice but to acquiesce.

 

“Fine,” she hisses. “Just get this thing off me.”
 

 

“Ask me nicely,” he says. Miri is so exasperated by his smugness that she starts to tear up a little, to her great chagrin. But she does what she’s told.

 

“Good girl.” Hasteinn produces a key of strange design. As he reaches a hand behind her to sweep aside her hair, his thumb caresses the back of her bare neck.

Miri’s breath catches in her throat, but the moment passes as he sticks the key into the lock on the back of the device. With a turn of the key, the device falls apart, useless, but so too does the key.

 

Miri is mortified by the whole strange interlude. But even so, flaring in the pit of her stomach is a secret warmth that she doesn’t quite know what to make of.
 

 

With the yoke no longer around her neck and restraining her hands, they delve deeper into the barrow. The draugr in these depths are tougher - older, says Hasteinn, and closer to whatever magic animates them - but they all fall under the fury of Hasteinn’s lupine assault - aided, of course, by Miri’s magic.

 

 

The wall inscribed with the old dragon tongue transfixes priestess and sellsword both. There is an undercurrent of... Power here that Miri struggles to understand. Hasteinn, too, is pensive.

 

 

Their reverie is interrupted by a draugr rising from its grave, a terrible great-axe dripping with frost clutched in its hands. It shouts with bone-rending ferocity and rains frozen blows on Hasteinn’s shield, but Hasteinn’s methodical counterattacks drive it into a corner, where it is finally slain.

 

Miri helps too, sustaining Hasteinn with her healing magic while taking cover behind him. After, Hasteinn even admits, if a bit brusquely, that he could not have done it without her help.

 

It’s the smallest thing, but that little concession makes Miri unreasonably giddy, though it may have just been the adrenaline of the battle.

 

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They return to Whiterun after stopping at Riverwood to return the claw to Lucan Valerius, who is none the wiser about the claw's true purpose. His reward, plus the rest of the haul from the barrow, is enough to cover Hasteinn’s back pay.
 

 

In Whiterun, flush with coin and success, Hasteinn celebrates by getting well and truly drunk. Miri wouldn’t have minded a celebratory drink or two with him, but the brute ignores her entirely, eyeing instead the scowling woman in full plate in the corner.

 

Miri leaves him to his revelry, and nurses an ale while talking to Hulda, the innkeeper. Her hands are always moving, doing this thing and that at the counter, but she is no less interesting a gossip for that. Miri finds herself drawn deep into conversation with her. By the time her drink is finished, she has lost Hasteinn.

 

She finds her sellsword by the ragged grunting coming from the back of the inn.

 

There, on a bed of rough straw, Hasteinn and the surly Nord warrior woman from before are naked and entwined in a savage struggle… only neither seem to be in pain, and their grunting and moaning seem to emanate rather from… pleasure.

 

 

Miri is reminded of a book she once saw Brother Nestor reading - “The Beast With Two Backs”. Brother Nestor had hurriedly put it away when she approached, but she’d snuck a glance at it, later, when the brother was in his cups. The beast was no mythical creature at all, but two people, entwined in passion, with descriptions that were at once florid and unspeakably coarse.

 

 

Entranced by the sight, Miri realizes dimly that she is grinding her hips against the doorframe, in imitation of the Nordwoman.

 

 

“You, by the door,” the Nordwoman barks, suddenly. “Join in, or get out.”

 

Hasteinn’s head snaps towards the door. He makes full eye contact with Miri for a brief eternity, and for an instant Miri is frozen, a rabbit caught in the sightline of a predator.

 

Then Hasteinn jerks and tenses, gripping the Nord woman by the hips.

 

Miri turns and bolts, almost stumbling over her own feet and falling on her ass in her haste.
 

 

Her dreams that night are filled with beasts - spiders, dead things… and especially the two-backed kind, writhing and tumbling over a bed of rough straw.

 

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